Could it be any harder?
by fee-kh
Summary: Seemingly simple questions often have the most difficult answers.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, or the title of this piece. I borrowed it from a Calling song. However the idea is mine.

A/N: This happened to me and you write what you know. A guy I liked asked me the last question in this chapter and I answered verbatim as Brennan does.

And I have made some changes to this. Regarding American and British terms and some grammar. Also added the odd sentence.

**Could it be any harder?**

"What did you say to him?" Angela hissed, as soon as her foot crossed the threshold of Brennan's office.

Her friend glanced up, face carefully blank, as if she had just been roused from a deep thought process and you were wasting her time for nothing. "Say to whom, Ange?"

"Don't give me that, Sweetie. You know exactly who I am talking about." She watched in frustration as Brennan refused to comment. "Booth, sweetie. What did you say to Booth?"

A brief flicker passed through Brennan's eyes, easily missed by those who didn't look too closely. But Angela had been watching Brennan for more than a year and that one flicker spoke volumes to her. Something had gone down in Brennan's office and her friend did not want her to know.

"I saw him come in here not a half hour ago looking apprehensive but happy and five minutes ago he storms out with an expression on his face like all colour has been drained from his world." Angela paused, waiting for a reaction. When none was forthcoming, she continued: "So that leads me to believe that sometime in the twenty-odd minutes Booth was in here with you, something happened. So spill!"

"Deductive reasoning, Angela?" Brennan tried and failed to smile. "Are we rubbing off on you?"

Angela refused to be riled. "Don't change the subject, Sweetie. What happened?"

"I don't know!" Brennan groused. "Why couldn't he just leave well enough alone? Everything was fine. Why did he have to change everything?"

Angela frowned. "Honey, you have to give me a wee bit more than that. I don't do cryptic speech."

Brennan expelled a gusty sigh, ignoring her friend in favour of continuing her rant. "Who does he think he is? He can't just come in here and turn it all on its head. That is not how it works. It was comfortable this way. We knew where we stood and now he came in here and destroyed all that on a whim. Stupid alpha-male tendencies."

"You're still not making any sense, Tempe."

"Well,, I have work to do, Angela. There's a Peruvian mummy on the slab that needs to be authenticated. And I need to supervise Zack when he identifies body 494." She jumped up, feverishly collecting her papers. Angela's hand on her arm stilled her movements immediately. She let herself be pulled back down on her couch, keeping her eyes glued to her hands so she would have to meet Angela's all too perceptive gaze.

"Tempe, start from the beginning and tell me what happened."

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Brennan futilely attempted to concentrate on the task at hand. Three reports needed to be finished off so Booth could countersign them, Hodges preliminary report on the Silphidae beetle they had found in the mummy bindings was in. Then there was Zack clamouring for attention, worried about his first solo classification. He needed somebody to metaphorically hold his hand. And as a cherry on top, her editor was pushing her to read through the last editor's draft of her second book. She was drowning in work and loving every minute of it. It kept her mind too busy to think about..

"Hey, Bones. You busy?" Booth's voice jerked her from her thoughts from the work at hand and back into the real world. She stared past him with a little frown marring her forehead.

"Do we have a new case?"

Booth shifted in the doorframe, obviously debating something with himself. With jerky movements he stepped fully into her office and closed the door behind him. And once again he seemed lost as to what to do next. He flopped down on her couch with uncharacteristic gracelessness.

"Is there something you wanted, Booth? Because I am really busy."

"Bones, I know you're busy. This. This won't take long." He stared down at his hands and then back up at her. "Could you maybe sit down?" He patted the seat next to himself.

Brennan fidgeted in her chair for a moment, before giving herself a push. She stalked over and joined her partner.

"What's up, Booth?"

When no answer was forthcoming, Brennan spoke once more. "Listen, either tell me what this is about or leave. Cause I don't have a lot of time today and I can't just sit here and-"

"Bones! Just be quiet for a second. One second." He waited for her nod and after a moment took a deep breath and launched right in.

"Bones. Temperance. We're partners. We are good partners. Have the best track record in the whole agency. We work well together. And I thought that was enough. That to complicate things would destroy what we already have. But when I saw you with Kenton, I realised that it would never be enough. I want more. I want us to be more."

Brennan could only stare at him for once in her life completely lost for words. She made no move to extricate her hands when Booth enfolded them in his, met his gaze head-on as he laid his heart on the line.

"I guess what I am saying is that I like you more than just as my partner. And what I want to know is how you see me. What do you think of me, not as your partner, but as a man?"

Brennan swallowed past the lump in her throat and answered without thinking. "You scare me."


	2. Chapter 2

"You said what?" Angela screeched.

"I told him he scared me."

"I heard you the first time round. I just can't believe it. The hottest man in the FBI. Your knight in standard issue body armour, was prepared to flout frat regulations for you and you told him that he scared you?"

"First of all frat regulations don't apply to us and secondly I already told you that was what I said, so if you have nothing to add then leave. I have work."

Her rude tone almost made Angela go after all but a shrewd look exposed the pain hiding in Brennan's blue eyes. Told her that Brennan's words were just a mask. She decided to have another go at reaching her friend.

"Don't give me that Brennan. Seriously now. What in blazes possessed you to tell him that instead of jumping his bones before he even finished his sentence?"

Her friend gave a long-suffering sigh. "I told him the truth, Ange. He scares me. What he makes me feel scares me. When he looks at me I can see those things in his eyes."

"What things?"

Brennan jumped up, restlessly pacing as she attempted to grasp ideas she had successfully avoided thinking about for the last couple of months. "You know. A house, a home, happiness. Maybe a dog. The whole picket fences deal. Kids." The last came out in an almost inaudible whisper, but Angela caught it anyway.

"Tempe! I thought you didn't want kids."

"I don't! Really I don't. How can I bring children into this world knowing what I know. Seeing what I see every day. My job is dangerous. Not just that when normal people go on vacation I visit the battlefields of the earth trying to provide closure for hundreds of people. My everyday job would give normal people nightmares. I could be shot or hurt every day. I know that. I don't want any children of mine to experience what I did. I don't want them to feel like I didn't try hard enough to stay with them. That they did something wrong." She sighed and flopped down next to Angela. "But Booth makes me believe. In him, the world. That it is possible to have it all. The whole happy family deal Hollywood always prattles on about."

"And that scares you." Angela summarised, only just managing to avoid bouncing around in reaction to the sheer romanticism of it all.

"Yes, that scares me, Angela. That one man can make me feel so much. What am I going to do?" it was meant as a rhetorical question but Angela decided to answer anyway.

"Well, Sweetie, I know your parents did a number on you and feeling like your brother abandoned you at the same time did not help. And I get that you're scared of the next step, of what Booth could make you feel given half the chance. But if you let that man go now, thinking what he thinks, then you will regret it for the rest of your life. You have a chance here to have everything. It's risky, I know. And there are no guarantees. Nothing comes with a guarantee these days, but you should try. At least then you know."

"But what if I lose him. Lose what we had before." Brennan asked, an almost desperate plea in her voice for Angela to lie to her, knowing that she wouldn't.

"You already lost him, Sweetie. He crossed the line and now you have to join him. What you had before is over and there is nothing that you can do about that. But you can let Booth in. He will keep your heart safe. You know that, right? You trust him with your life, why is it so hard to trust him with your heart, too?" And with those parting words Angela left Brennan to her thoughts.

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The storm outside was a fitting background to the turmoil churning inside him. Booth hadn't bothered to turn on the lights, so an almost preternatural gloom pervaded his apartment, belying the early afternoon his clock insisted it was. The black clouds roiling across the horizon blocked out most of the afternoon sunlight, casting an early evening over Washington, the rain driving the people home in front of it, leaving behind desolate, deserted streets and sidewalks.

Just the weather you needed for a serious case of feeling sorry for yourself and some first-class brooding. God it hurt. Nothing came close to this.

His final act of gambling in his life, the biggest Hail Mary of his life and he had lost. He had honestly believed that Brennan wouldn't blow him out of the water like she had. His fist hit the wall beside his chair once more, the pain centring him a little in the darkness of the room.

"Why?" The word echoed through his apartment. He had thought he at least stood a chance, a chance she wouldn't kick his ass, would listen and maybe just maybe let him in. And she had listened, had heard all he had to say, though it hadn't been his most eloquent speech. And then she had destroyed all his illusions in three small words. He scared her.

Brennan, the most kickass female he had ever had the fortune to meet, proficient in three martial arts, able to flatten a gang leader and get mostly away with it. The woman who bowed down to nothing was scared of him. It couldn't be born.

There was only one thing for it. He would ask for reassignment in the morning. He would miss the squints, though he'd never admit how much, but that was nothing to the amount of pain he would feel if he had to see Bones everyday, having to pretend there was nothing there. No , not Bones. He would have to remember to call her Dr. Brennan.

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Brennan had been sitting in her rarely used car for over twenty minutes now, staring at the door to Booth's apartment. Slowly but surely the temperature was dropping in the vehicle as the foul weather outside pounded the car, odd gusts of wind making it rock slightly like a ship at sea. She huddled further into her seat, lost in thought. Angela's words echoing through her mind ceaselessly.

She had been debating with herself for what seem like days but had in reality only been a couple of hours.

Could she really just throw the habits she had spent a lifetime building out the window? Habits that had served her well over the years, and she had had no intention of ever changing. She had fought long and hard with herself for the equilibrium established in her life, she did not regret that the emphasis had lain on work for so long. Relationships were fleeting things, a mutual agreement to have fun together and relax, not invitations to indulge in messy emotions. In the past whenever that had been the case she had packed her bags with a light heart and moved back to her default state, her apartment welcoming her with open arms even if nobody else did.

Brennan chewed her lip thoughtfully, thinking back over the last years. When it came down to it her life had changed even before Booth had stormed back into it, hijacking her at the airport. Notions she had thought etched in stone had been slowly eroding under the constant pressure of her co-workers. The first to breach her defences had been Zack. Zack who reminded her so much of herself ins o many ways. Zack who while perhaps even more intelligent than her shared the ineptitude when dealing with everyday human life. He was what she could have been. If her parents hadn't deserted her, hadn't lied to her, hadn't been bank robbers. Zack was her, a decade and a half younger with a large and loving family.

Hodges, the self-professed bug and slime man, had in a way replaced her brother. His good-natured ribbing and teasing kept her on her toes. He tested her and pushed her, allowing her to push right back. It was liberating, as she could talk to him about pretty much anything, as long as it wasn't girly mushy moments.

Then there was Goodman, her boss, but in many ways despite the small age gap more a father figure than anything. Father figure to all of them to be honest. He was sounding board, staunch supporter and strict leader all in one go. Always pressing for them to outdo themselves.

Perhaps the biggest change had come about when Angela joined their little family. And it surprised Brennan to no end that that was how she thought of them all. Her family. Perhaps it was true. Friends are the family you can choose for yourself. Before Angela they had had quite a few forensic artists come and go at the Jeffersonian, but none of them had cut it, often dropping out for one reason or another. She remembered one that had actually run away screaming the first time a fresh corpse was brought in. Angela had been different from the start, seeing beyond the decay and dirt to the bones beneath and recreating the life the person had lived. Always smiling and happy she had been a breath of fresh air in their often staid and ordered environment.

Brennan had no idea how it had happened, but one day Angela was her friend and then her best friend and the name she put in as her emergency contact. The process had been so gradual she hadn't even realised how far she had let down her defences before being forced to think about it.

And now she was thinking about letting someone else in, or at least thinking about knowingly letting in Booth further than he was already. It was a frightening concept. Booth had inserted himself in her life so gradually, immersing himself, that she now could not think of a single area he wasn't involved in.

He was everywhere. Her work, her office where they more often than not went through the details of their cases together. Her home where they had jammed to Foreigner together and he had nearly died. Her books, and here in the privacy of her own car she could admit finally to herself that Andrew was to a large extent based on Booth. Her second book was dedicated to him for chrissake.

It hit her that she and Booth were already in a relationship. They spent more time with each other than many couples did. They had entered every aspect of each others lives, shared their secrets, supported the other in hard times, saved each others lives. All Booth had really been asking was to finally let him in all the way And while the thought of sharing such intimacy with another was scary to say the least, the concept of living without such a large part of her life was infinitely more frightening. Whenever she thought about it, her chest squeezed tight with pain and she couldn't breath. Couldn't function.

Losing Booth would paralyse her and it didn't have to be that way. It was up to her to make sure that it never was that way.

Taking a deep breath, Brennan stepped out of the humid air of her car and into the storm raging over Washington. Leaning into the wind and the rain, she pulled her coat tight around her slight frame and took the few steps to Booth's door.

It was time to take the next step


	3. Chapter 3

Booth was stalking his apartment like a caged lion, unable to rest in one place for longer than a minute. This was killing him, the thought of cutting Brennan out of his life was killing him. It wasn't supposed to be this way. He knew how his friends saw him and couldn't really blame them. For years he had played the field, going out with woman after woman, treating them to a fine time but making it clear that the long-term thing was not for him.

Granted it had bitten him in the ass when his little boy was born. Hadn't that been a surprise and a half. Yet, no matter how much trouble it had caused, never mind the emotional blackmail material that gave his child's mother, he would never change it. Not one bit of it.

And now cosmic justice had bitten him in the ass. No doubt there were a few women out there who had been praying for this to happen. For the great Booth to fall in love and land on his ass. Served him right. But dammit did it have to hurt so much?

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"This is ridiculous, Brennan." Temperance hissed to herself. "You are a qualified forensic anthropologist. You have stared down thugs with guns and revolutionaries with bombs. You worked on the killing fields of Basra for three months. And in the sludge of New Orleans. This is nothing. Now go up there and knock on the bloody door." She stalked up to the door in question once more, raised her fist to knock and chickened out again at the last moment.

"Goddammit!" She yelled, before giving the door a solid kick with her foot, that had her freezing in her tracks as she realised what she had just done. And right on cue she heard his voice rumbling that he was coming.

"Crap."

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Booth almost jumped out of his skin when a loud bang rang through his apartment making the door rattle in its hinges.

"I'm coming. I'm coming. Keep your shirt on." Didn't people know how to knock anymore. They didn't have to kick in his damn door.

Stalking to the door, he ripped it open, a 'what do you want' on his lips, only to die before he could speak the words when he saw Brennan standing there. She was paler than he had ever seen her, two lurid spots of red sitting high on her cheekbones. And she was soaked to the skin, water dripping from her coat, staining her trousers and plastering her hair to her head. She looked like a drowned rat. And despite the fact that he had convinced himself to stay away, that it was better if he did, he just didn't have it in him to leave her standing out there in the rain when he could get her inside and dry.

He couldn't bring himself to ask her in, however, so instead just stepped back and held the door open for her.

He saw Brennan hesitate, the move spearing through him and hitting that place where he still ached with need. And then she was ducking beneath his arm and into his apartment. His dark, silent apartment, that now held just the two of them. It was too intimate.

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What the hell had she been thinking, Brennan asked herself distractedly, as she struggled out of her soaked clothes and into the jogging set Booth had laid out for her along with a huge fluffy towel that almost drowned her in its folds. She was more than uncomfortable with the implied intimacy of it all. Her, half-naked in his bedroom, putting on his clothes. It was too intimate. Made her itchy and filled with the urge to just run away as far as her legs would carry her.

She shook herself, if there was one thing that could be said about her it was that she was stubborn to a fault and once she had made up her mind, then nothing would get in her way. And she had made up her mind. Now she just had to find the right words.

"I'm doomed."

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Booth felt restless, puttering around the kitchen and trying to keep himself occupied so his thoughts would not wander to Brennan in his bedroom. Brennan stripping in his bedroom. Half-naked Brennan. Brennan wearing his clothes, something that usually only happened when you've been in a relationship for a while and there was something right in seeing her in your clothes.

Hope blossomed inside him, that maybe he had misheard her earlier, only to be ruthlessly squashed. Brennan never lied. She saw no point in lying. At times in the past he had hated that, it made her clumsy and off-putting, but it had its bright sides. She never left you hanging, wondering what she had meant, because she said what she thought, without prevaricating and without apology.

He should just ask her to leave. Well, pour some hot tea down her throat and make her leave.

Toss her clothes in the tumble drier, give her hot tea and make her leave.

"This is a bad idea."

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Brennan couldn't postpone it any longer. She had to go out and face him. Stumbling slightly in the oversized clothes, the legs dragging along the floor although she had rolled them up twice. And the sleeves covered her hands, although again she had rolled them up, and the neckline kept slipping past one shoulder. She was swamped in his clothes, drowning in them, the scent of him that lingered despite the detergent he used for washing. Possibly not realising that the detergent was just a part of the smell she associated with him. The smell of cleanliness combining with what was simply him, coffee and apple pie. She had not realised how much that scent comforted her, until she had slipped the clothes on just now, let the scent envelope her and let her think that maybe, just maybe this might all work out okay.

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"Hi."

The voice was small, unsure, so unlike her, it was enough to make his hands still where they were fiddling with his cutlery drawer. Booth took a deep breath and turned to look at her.

Barefoot, she stood in the door to his kitchen, fidgeting slightly from foot to foot, one hand plucking at the hem of his sweatshirt. His sweatshirt that looked so much better on her than it ever had on him.

"What are you doing here?" Okay, that hadn't come out like he wanted to and judging by the shocked expression on her face, it hadn't been what she was expecting to hear, either. Well, tough.

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Brennan felt his words like a slap, fearing that he had already shut her out, that she was too late.

"I wanted to talk to you."

She watched his face, using her increasing knowledge of social skills, limited though they were, to read his expression. Her efforts were foiled by what she had come to know as his poker face. Well come to know as his poker face after he had explained the concept extensively and repetitively.

When no reply was forthcoming after a few minutes, Brennan sighed and continued. "Can we maybe sit down?"

Booth merely shrugged and led the way to the couch in the lounge. She looked out the windows at the storm still raging outside and shuddered. She'd never liked storms, they were uncontrollable and just went on as long as they pleased and you never knew what would still be left after.

When Booth made to turn on the light by the couch, Brennan spoke up.

"No, don't turn on the light. Could you leave it off. Makes this easier."

The darkness hid his flinch from her.

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Booth flinched. So she couldn't even look at him anymore. He was regretting more and more letting her into his apartment and giving her another opportunity to hurt him. This had been a bad idea from the start. Actually telling her what he felt, what he wanted deep inside, had been yearning for, unacknowledged at first, since that first day when she had gotten up in his face about something or other. The reason had escaped his mind long since but not the fire in her eyes and her voice. Granted in the beginning his wishes had been slightly less than honourable, wondering if that fire translated to other areas of her life, but that had changed, turned to deep respect over time. And respect had turned to friendship and friendship had turned to something more. Or so he had thought.

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Brennan wasn't sure if Booth had heard her, but the fact that the lounge still remained reassuringly dark meant he had at least heard the first part of her words. Now was the time and here was the place.

All she had to do was step up and take the plunge.

Easier said than done.

"You didn't let me finish."

A snort was her only answer. "Was hard to get that the wrong way, Brennan."

It hurt. It actually physically hurt to hear him call her something other than the nickname he had coined and was the only one she let get away with it. Just that alone should have been a sixty-foot high neon blinking sign that this was more than just a business thing.

"Don't call me that." She continued quickly before he had the chance to interrupt and ask the valid question what it was he should call her, if not by her name. And she wasn't ready for that yet.

"All my life, the men have left. My dad left, my brother left. They all left me."

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Booth felt this deserved an answer. "I didn't leave, Brennan."

He had to say it. Had to make her see that the only thing that made him leave was her rejection.

"I know." Okay, he hadn't seen that one coming and it threw him for a loop.

Before he could say anything, she continued, leaving him to his thoughts as she told him about her life once more, some he already knew other stuff he didn't. And it struck him that she was telling him things that she had never told anybody. And it made him mad.

"You don't have to do this. I don't want to hear it. I scare you remember."

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Now she was getting pissed off.

"You - you - you OAF! You never listen and you never let me finish." Brennan was yelling now, frustrated that this was not going well. She let the rage fuel her words, let them spew forth like some kind of verbal vomiting. Didn't think about what she was saying, how vulnerable it would make her. She just had to get it all out.

"I don't want to be in the position where somebody can hurt me like that again. Where leaving would hurt as much as you leaving today did. And I don't want to need you. I don't want to see it. I see you and me and forever. And it scares me. I don't want my happiness resting on one person again. I just don't but I can't help it. I believe in you. I believe in what you believe. And I think that maybe it could work because it is not just anybody, it is you. I see children. And I want that."

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The only thought running through Booth's mind at her last sentences was that she said it like that creepy kid did in the movie. 'I see dead people.' It was exactly the same inflection, the same horror of not quite being able to believe what you were seeing despite the fact that you knew it to be true. And he couldn't help himself.

Jumping up from the couch, he was at her side in three strides, where he had wanted, ached to be all day, ever since he had stormed out of her office what seemed a lifetime ago.

"It's okay. It's gonna be okay. I've got you."

Her face turned to his and the last thing he heard before she kissed him and changed his life forever, was her deep-felt sigh of relief.


End file.
